Helen the Great

Actress goes back to her Russian roots to play ANOTHER queen

SHE’S no stranger to playing royalty and cuts a distinctly regal figure. But that’s not all that makes Dame Helen Mirren perfect casting as Russia’s Catherine the Great.

The Oscar-winner, seen here in the first image of her as the 18th century empress in a forthcoming Sky drama, has Russian ancestry and was born Ilyena Mironov.

Her grandfather was an aristocrat and diplomat who, with his family, was stranded in Britain by the Russian revolution in 1917. His son married a British woman and anglicised the family name to Mirren when the actress was ten.

Dame Helen, 73, who has played both Elizabeth I and Elizabeth II, is pictured in a grey wig and blue and gold dress in a recreation of Catherine’s private quarters. Sets have been modelled on Russian palaces, with paintings hand-copied from originals in the Hermitage museum.

The four-part drama will chart the latter years of Catherine’s 34-year reign and is being filmed in Russia, Latvia and Lithuania.